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This memorial drinking fountain commemorates Greyfriars Bobby, a Skye terrier who reputedly watched over his master's grave in nearby Greyfriars kirkyard for fourteen years. Touched by Bobby's devotion, the kirk gardener erected a shelter over the grave for him, and Edinburgh's Lord Provost paid his licence fee to save him from being impounded and destroyed: "effectively, Bobby was now owned by the city" (McNab 307). The dog became so famous that shortly before he died William Brodie was commissioned to model this likeness of him.

Benedict Read writes humorously: "How the sculptor kept his sitter occupied is not recorded, though the dog's patience was exemplary and renowned; whatever the case, the portrait is very natural" (177).

Undoubtedly the most popular and beloved of all Brodie's many works, it was executed during the period when he was working on figures from Scott's Waverley novels to adorn the Scott Monument in Princes Street, Edinburgh. The bronze dog was integrated into this drinking fountain, and the whole was a gift to the city by the well-known philanthropist and animal-lover, Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts, one of the many who had visited Edinburgh to see Greyfriars Bobby keeping his vigil (see "Prominent People"). The dog also inspired Eleanor Atkinson's well-known novel Greyfriars Bobby (1912), originally written for adults, but now considered a children's classic.